News Main Menu

Small portion of University community to receive pilot version of culture survey

August 2, 2013

Small portion of University community to receive pilot version of culture survey

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Next week a small number of individuals in the Penn State community will receive an email from a third party, inviting them to participate in a pilot Penn State Culture Survey. The pilot is being conducted to prepare for a survey that will be sent to all faculty, staff, technical service employees, and students on all campuses in the fall.

"The purpose of the survey is to better understand our stakeholders’ views about the culture of our University and the values that we share as a community,” said Penn State President Rodney Erickson. The survey will be conducted by the Ethics Resource Center (ERC), an independent nonprofit research organization based in Arlington, VA. ERC is dedicated to independent research and advancing high ethical standards and practices in public and private institutions.

"A small cross-section of faculty, administrators, staff, technical service employees, undergraduates and graduate students at Penn State will be randomly selected to participate in this first pilot phase" said Regis Becker, Penn State's chief ethics and compliance officer. "Following that, the ERC will launch a University-wide survey and the responses will be used to provide us with a sense of fundamental and shared beliefs held by those in our community."

Becker said the pilot survey will help ERC obtain additional feedback on the survey instrument and process.

An email from President Erickson will be sent to participants, encouraging those randomly selected for the pilot survey to participate. ERC will conduct the survey in a manner that protects the identities of the participants.